The Best Years of a Life
They knew each other long ago: a man and a woman whose dazzling and unexpected romance captured in the now-iconic film revolutionized our understanding of love. Today, the former race car driver seems lost in the pathways of his memory. In order to help him, his son seeks out the woman his father wasn’t able to cherish but whom he constantly revisits in his thoughts and dreams. Anne reunites with Jean-Louis and their story picks up where they left it…
Movies Like The Best Years of a Life
Similar in style, tone, and themes — find your next watch.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
2010★ 5.9
Two married couples find only trouble and heartache as their complicated lives unfold. After 40 years of marriage, Alfie leaves his wife to pursue what he thinks is happiness with a call girl. His wife, Helena, reeling from abandonment, decides to follow the advice of a psychic. Sally, the daughter of Alfie and Helena, is unhappy in her marriage and develops a crush on her boss, while her husband, Roy, falls for a woman engaged to be married.
Chéri
2009★ 6.1
The son of a courtesan retreats into a fantasy world after being forced to end his relationship with the older woman who educated him in the ways of love.
Not Easily Broken
2009★ 6.4
A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.
Anaïs in Love
2021★ 6.2
A young woman struggling to stay on top of everything in her life meets a married publisher and begins an affair with him.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
2025★ 6.1
An aspiring author looking to get more out of life takes up a writing residency and finds herself in the sort of romantic entanglements that could come from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.
Rosaline
2022★ 7.1
Left heartbroken after Romeo begins to pursue her cousin Juliet, Rosaline schemes to foil the famous romance and win back her guy in this comedic twist of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
L.A. Without a Map
1999★ 5.9
An aspiring Hollywood actress, on a visit to a charming North England town, has a brief fling with the town undertaker, who also writes obituaries for the local paper. Returning home, where she works as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant, she tells everyone about the handsome "writer" she met on her trip. Unfortunately, he decides to follow her back to Hollywood, setting up the expected light romantic comedy with asides as the newcomer gains experience about the goings on in Hollywood.
Danny Deckchair
2003★ 6.1
An unappreciated laborer's patience reaches breaking point when his girlfriend cancels a romantic holiday. Making light of the situation, he decides to tie hundreds of helium balloons to a chair in an outlandish bid to float to a new life.
A California Christmas: City Lights
2021★ 6.6
Follows Callie and Joseph one year after they fell in love, now running a dairy farm and winery, but their romance is threatened when business and family obligations call Joseph back to the city.
Sidewalks of New York
2001★ 6.0
The film follows the marital and dating lives of three men and three women who unknowingly form a tangled web of relationships. Interspersing "man on the street" interviews with scenes from the six characters' lives, the film weaves a humorous and biting commentary on the game of love -- easy to start, hard to finish.
The Lords of Flatbush
1974★ 5.8
Set in 1958, the coming of age story follows four lower middle-class Brooklyn teenagers known as The Lords of Flatbush. The Lords chase girls, steal cars, shoot pool, get into street fights, and hang out at a local malt shop.
Which Brings Me to You
2023★ 6.2
Two romantic burnouts, Jane and Will, are immediately drawn to each other at a mutual friend’s wedding. After a disastrous hookup in the coatroom, the two spend the next 24 hours together, trading candid confessions of messy histories and heartbreak, on the off chance that this fling might be the real thing.
Kings & Queen
2004★ 6.9
Shortly before her wedding, art gallery director Nora travels from Paris to Grenoble to visit her preteen son, Elias, who is spending time with her aging professor father, Louis, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. During her stay, she reaches out to her former lover, Ismaël, a viola player and father figure to Elias who has been committed against his will to a mental hospital. Ismaël, however, has his own problems to sort out.
A California Christmas
2020★ 6.4
With his carefree lifestyle on the line, a wealthy charmer poses as a ranch hand to get a hardworking farmer to sell her family’s land before Christmas.
Peace, Love & Misunderstanding
2011★ 5.8
A conservative lawyer named Diane takes her two teenage children Jake and Zoe to meet their estranged, hippie grandmother in Woodstock after her husband asks for a divorce.
Catch and Release
2006★ 5.9
For a grieving fiancée, learning to love again requires the help of her late love's three best friends.
Irreplaceable You
2018★ 6.9
A stunning cancer diagnosis spurs Abbie to seek a future girlfriend for fiancé and childhood sweetheart Sam, who's clueless when it comes to dating.
Is This Thing On?
2025★ 6.6
As their marriage quietly unravels, Alex faces middle age and an impending divorce, seeking new purpose in the New York comedy scene while Tess confronts the sacrifices she made for their family—forcing them to navigate co-parenting, identity, and whether love can take a new form.
Love in Taipei
2023★ 6.8
A young American woman is sent by her parents to a cultural immersion program in Taipei where she begins a new journey of self-discovery and romance.
Delicacy
2011★ 6.4
A French woman mourning over the death of her husband three years prior is courted by a Swedish co-worker.